Reflections on the Olympics: The Moment

THINK ABOUT IT

Don Meyer, Ph.D.

Reflections on the Olympics: The Moment

“She did pretty much the opposite of what I told her. And I am so glad she did.”

Mark Coogan, Olympic coach

Now that the 2016 Summer Olympics are over, I decided to write three columns to capture my reflections. Last week I addressed “The Competition.” Today, I will talk about “The Moment.”

If you and I were able to sit down over a cup of coffee and share our favorite moment in sports, I am sure we would have a lot to talk about. If we were talking about baseball, we might mention Don Larsen’s perfect game in the 5th game of the World Series between the New York Yankees and the Brooklyn Dodgers on October 8, 1956. Twenty-seven batters up. Twenty-seven batters down.

Or we might talk about the AFC Division Playoff game between the Pittsburg Steelers and the Oakland Raiders on December 23, 1972. On that day, Franco Harris caught a pass thrown by Terry Bradshaw that ricocheted off one of the Raiders players into his arms and he ran it in for the winning touchdown with only 30 seconds left in the game. That has been called the “greatest play of all time” and has been nicknamed “The Immaculate Reception.”

Throughout the Summer 2016 Olympics there were many dramatic moments which could go on your list or mine of special moments that we will long remember. But the one that stands out to me was not of someone crossing a finish line first or landing perfectly from a gymnastic maneuver or throwing the shot put to break an Olympic record or even giving further evidence of being the world’s fastest man.

My Olympic moment took place after a collision between American Abbey D’Agostino and New Zealand’s Nikki Hamblin during a 5,000-meter race. They both wanted to make it to the finals but when they both fell to the ground, each had no chance of winning that race.

It was then that my Olympic moment occurred. Instead of ignoring Hamblin, D’Agostino stopped and helped Hamblin up so they could at least finish the race together. The next day D’Agostino found out from an MRI that she had a season ending injury to her right knee.

Later D’Agostino said, “Although my actions were instinctual at that moment, the only way I can and have rationalized it is that God prepared my heart to respond that way. This whole time here He’s made it clear to me that my experience in Rio was going to be about more than my race performance — and as soon as Nikki got up I knew that was it.”

With deep emotion, Tim Hutchings, the NBC commentator and former Olympic athlete from Great Britain observed, “You suddenly get this sense that you are watching something incredible unfolding and you wonder how to put it into words. Her dream was crushed but then something magic happened. She will be a national hero now, an Olympic hero, and rightly so. She showed how a special act can reach people far more than all the medals in the world.”

I was also fascinated to learn that D’Agostino did not follow the instructions of her coach, Mark Coogan. He later said, “I always told her that if you go down, here is what I want you to do. I told her to get up, dust herself off, have a quick look around and then get right back to running. Obviously she did pretty much the opposite of that, and the world got to see the kind of person she is. She did the right thing.”

We who watch athletic competition, especially the Olympics, empathize with the “thrill of victory and the agony of defeat.” But as we look back on Rio 2016, any of us who saw Abbey D’Agostino’s remarkable sportsmanship will celebrate how she, with grace and kindness, turned the “agony of defeat” into the “thrill of victory.”

Think about it.

Dr. Don Meyer is President Emeritus of the

University of Valley Forge, Phoenixville, PA

Connect via dgmeyer@valleyforge.edu

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